Truck talk: LaHood discusses Republican House agenda

PEORIA, Ill. — Now that Republicans have a majority in the U.S. House, they are ready to get to work — and some work already has started.

That was the message from U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., as he talked to and listened to an audience at the Mid-West Truck and Trailer Show in Peoria.

Fresh from a longer-than-usual election process for the new speaker of the House, LaHood mentioned that while the GOP majority may be smaller than many expected he is excited to go to work.

“I am very happy that the Republicans took back the House of Representatives. I think we all expected that we were going to have a huge majority. Everyone was kind of drinking the Kool-Aid on the red wave and that faded at the end,” he said.

“We ended up in the majority, but only 222 Republicans in the House and I am proud to be a part of that majority moving forward.”

LaHood sits on the House Ways and Means Committee and will serve as a subcommittee chair on the Work and Welfare Subcommittee.

He also serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was appointed to a new committee formed after the midterm elections called the House Select Committee on China.

That is a bipartisan committee made up of 13 House Republicans and 11 House Democrats that is charged with investigating the economic, technological and security activities of the Chinese Communist Party.

“What I tell people is — China has a plan to replace the United States and they are working on it every single day and the sooner we wake up to that, the better off we are going to be as a country,” LaHood said.

He said the committee will look at Chinese activities from a global level and then examine what the U.S. response to those activities might be.

“This select committee is going to work, first of all, on highlighting the malign activities of China, whether it’s in the South China Sea, whether it’s with Taiwan, in Hong Kong,” he said.

“And then, secondarily, what can we do more in this country, in terms of working on decoupling, bringing jobs back to the United States, isolating China economically in the Indo-Pacific region?”

A major priority for House Republicans is to hold President Joe Biden and his administration accountable.

LaHood said the GOP majority in the House offers Republicans a number of ways to do that.

“It’s our responsibility, under the constitution, with checks and balances, to hold the Biden administration accountable and we are going to do that, in the Judiciary Committee, in the Oversight Committee, in the Ways and Means Committee. That will be our responsibility to do that,” he said.

In discussing the debt ceiling issue, LaHood did not let his own party off the hook for responsibility.

“We bring in a certain amount every year. We ought to not spend over that amount every year. Every year we spend more and more. Republicans are at blame, too. Republicans and Democrats are equally at blame for how we’ve done this,” he said.

“What we’ve said is we’ll consider raising the debt ceiling, but there has to be negotiation on cutting spending. I’ve said this before — the military, I think everything needs to be on the table. Our defense budget needs to be on the table. Social programs need to be on the table. We’ve got to get our fiscal house in order.”

In answer to an audience question about the need for a federal department of education, LaHood said the GOP will be looking at programs that have been expanded in the past few years.

“I have real concerns about the federal government mandating what goes on in Peoria or in Princeton or in Bloomington-Normal. So, the less the federal government is involved, the better,” he said.

“Those types of federal programs that have been expanded upon over the last several years, those are the ones we’ll be looking at refining or cutting back on.”

Answering a question about how to control illegal immigration, LaHood said he was in favor of engaging Mexico on the issue of illegal immigration and of continuing work on a border wall.

“Obviously, the Biden administration is not doing anything. There’s a plan on what we can do and that is engage Mexico on it. That is No. 1. No. 2, where we can build a wall, we ought to build the wall. We can’t do it the entire length of the border, but there are places where we can do it,” he said.

“We ought to listen to the border patrol agents. They are the experts that are on the ground that have told us what we need to do.”

LaHood said that Republicans plan to hold hearings with Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, about border security and illegal immigration.

“It’s ridiculous that we don’t stand up for the rule of law, that we are not abiding by it. I’m not one that’s going to come in here and say we ought to impeach Biden, but I am going to tell you this — we ought to impeach the Homeland Security secretary because he hasn’t done his job. He’s not abiding by the rule of law,” he said.

“We are going to call him up, he’s going to come up, under oath, in front of the committee and we are going to ask him questions — why are you not enforcing the rule of law? If he doesn’t have good answers, there will be impeachment of him and there should be.”

LaHood pointed out that he does favor legal immigration.

“I am all for legal immigration. We need legal immigration in this country. But when you are allowing people to come in the way they are and then what happens is when people come across, they get a court date, they never show up. There’s no enforcement of it,” he said.

While the GOP has short-term goals, the long-term goal is to put a Republican president in the White House in 2024.

“I think the perception is we are going to have gridlock in D.C. and we may. Democrats control the Senate. We control the House. The president is a Democrat,” LaHood said.

“I think our obligation and responsibility is to pass bills on behalf of the American people on the economy, on energy independence, on overregulation. This is what we believe in and hopefully we can find bipartisan support on it.

“We are going to see where we can find common ground. But if not, I think we will tee it up for hopefully electing a Republican president in 2024.”

LaHood said the clock is ticking on all of that work before the country enters another election cycle.

“Politically, we have six to nine months to do this because, a year from now, everyone will be talking about the presidential election,” he said.

“We have six to nine months to show the American people that you elected us for a reason, here’s what we’re doing and we are bringing tangible results to the American people.”